The 1990s

The exponential growth of the Internet and the World Wide Web, and huge leaps in home computer and telecommunications technology in the early 1990s have had a visible impact on cinematic representations of computers and artificial intelligence. Although films such as Terminator 2 continue the rich tradition of portraying menacing technological nightmares from our cyborg-ridden post-apocalyptic future, more and more films are focusing their attention on our increasingly information-intensive society. Explorations of the ramifications of machine intelligence--making machines that reproduce human intelligence--have largely given way to explorations of the ramifications of combining human intelligence with 1) the vast, interconnected oceans (for lack of a better metaphor) of digital information residing on global computer networks; and 2) the newly discovered "spaces" of virtual reality and cyberspace. In films such as Lawnmower Man, The Net, Ghost in the Machine, and Virtuosity, information networks and computer-generated worlds are dangerous, anarchic territories populated by corporate and political spies and serial killers, where a person's identity can be erased at the push of a button. There is also a continuing fascination with the sometimes beautiful, sometimes grotesque, cyborg--the half-human, half-machine that combines the best of both technologies.

Below are some representative films from the 1990s. Clicking on the title will take you to the filmography page, where you'll find a brief description of the film, links to other CyberCinema pages on that film, and a link to that film's entry in the Internet Movie Database.

Some AI Milestones from the 1990s^*

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